Turnip Fest cheque boost for the Ir­ish Wheel­chair As­so­ci­a­tion

THE Ir­ish Wheel­chair As­so­ci­a­tion has ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the peo­ple be­hind last year’s Turnip Fest in Gorey af­ter money raised at the event was pre­sented to the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

A cheque for €1,000 was handed over to the IWA’s Ser­vice Sup­port Of­fi­cer for Wex­ford, Selina Power, in Porter’s Bar, Kil­lenagh.

‘The pre­sen­ta­tion would have been made last year but un­for­tu­nately there was a fire in the venue and that was why it was de­layed so they de­cided to hand it over last week,’ said Ms Power.

‘Ev­ery­one in the or­gan­i­sa­tion is so grate­ful to ev­ery­one who helped raise the money,’ she added.

‘It was col­lected just from do­na­tions in the pub dur­ing the Turnip Fest.’

The money will go to­wards the IWA Wex­ford’s bus fund which is aimed at se­cur­ing a new mini-bus for the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

‘We have three buses at present but two of them are off the road,’ said Ms Power.

‘One of them is prob­a­bly not go­ing back on the road while a sec­ond one is in at the garage ev­ery other day,’ she added.

How­ever, she went on to em­pha­sise the ne­ces­sity of hav­ing the buses run­ning and how ac­cess to them gives ser­vice users in­de­pen­dence in ad­di­tion to help­ing com­bat lone­li­ness.

The IWA hopes to get the new bus in the New Year and as Ms Power pointed out ev­ery bit of money to­wards it is a great help.

‘The com­mu­nity spirit in and around Porter’s is fan­tas­tic and we are so ap­pre­cia­tive to ev­ery­one in the area who con­trib­uted to the fundraiser,’ said Ms Power.

‘A lot of our mem­bers need trans­port and if they don’t have it they lit­er­ally don’t get out of their home and that’s why the buses are so im­por­tant be­cause it’s good for their men­tal health as well as phys­i­cal well-be­ing,’ she added.

The IWA has two branches in Wex­ford - one in the town and one in Bal­ly­canew. How­ever, the bus ser­vice pro­vides ac­cess to the two cen­tres for peo­ple all around the county and that’s why hav­ing buses is in­valu­able to the or­gan­i­sa­tion and its mem­bers.

‘The buses are very im­por­tant to our mem­bers and we are try­ing to grow our ser­vice across the county,’ said Ms Power.

‘It’s lonely if you can­not be as in­de­pen­dent as you would like to be,’ she added.

‘They are a vi­tal part of the ser­vice we pro­vide.’

The next fundrais­ing event for the or­gan­i­sa­tion will be its an­nual An­gel Col­lec­tion which is part of a na­tion­wide ini­tia­tive that will take place on Thurs­day and Fri­day, Novem­ber 8 and 9.

Over the two days TY stu­dents around the county will be col­lect­ing money for the or­gan­i­sa­tion and as Ms Power pointed out the money raised from that will also go to­wards the bus fund.

Any­one in­ter­ested in help­ing out with the An­gel Col­lec­tion ini­tia­tive can con­tact Ms Power di­rectly on 085-8048177 or email: selina.power@ iwa.ie.